■ Thailand
Buddhist teacher murdered
Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead a Buddhist teacher in Thailand's restive Muslim south yesterday, the latest casualty in a spate of violence which has claimed over 200 lives since January, police said. The 49-year-old, who was a principal at an Islamic school, was shot as he was about to start his car parked in school grounds in Pattani Province, police said. The shooting came just over a week after an elderly Buddhist man was beheaded at a rubber plantation in Narathiwat Province, an incident which heightened fears of sectarian tension in the troubled region. Police declined to speculate on the motive for the killing.
■ Pakistan
Aid workers hide in hotel
Foreign aid workers have taken shelter in a hotel in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta after authorities warned them that Taliban rebels were planning suicide attacks against their offices, officials said. Some 25 expatriates from the UN and Western aid groups have left their residences and moved to Quetta's Serena Hotel -- just days after suspected Taliban gunmen killed five aid workers in neighboring Afghanistan. A Pakistani government agency responsible for security at refugee camps in southwestern Baluchistan province alerted the UN refugee agency and five non-governmental organizations over the weekend that groups with American and British employees were targets of the threat.
■ Pakistan
Truck plummets down ravine
A truck packed with pilgrims fell into a deep ravine in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 35 people and wounding eight others, a police official said yesterday. It was not immediately clear what caused the accident late Sunday near Abbottabad, about 200km northeast of Peshawar, and police official Shaukat Khan said authorities have transported bodies and injured to a nearby hospital. He said the pilgrims were returning from a shrine in Murree, a hill resort near the capital, Islamabad, but gave no additional details.
■ Singapore
New PM denies nepotism
Incoming prime minister Lee Hsien Loong denied speculation that his elevation to the nation's top job was because he was the son of the city-state's founder, a newspaper reported yesterday. "I have been in politics 20 years. People know me," the Straits Times quoted Lee as saying on Sunday. Lee, 52, is Singapore's deputy prime minister, finance minister and head of the central bank. He is the eldest son of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, and many political observers have suggested that he has been groomed to follow his father's footsteps since he was a boy.
■ Australia
Homicides down 15 percent
Homicides claimed the lives of 324 people in Australia last year -- a 15 percent decline from the year before, according to statistics released yesterday. The Australian Institute of Criminology figures showed there were 297 homicide cases resulting in the deaths of 324 people last year, down from 381 in 2002. That gave Australia, with a population of 20 million, a national homicide rate of 1.6 per 100,000 population, the lowest rate since the institute started collecting the figures in 1990. Homicides include cases that led to murder or manslaughter convictions, ranging from stabbing deaths to a case in which a tourist was killed by a crocodile after a tour guide told her it was safe to swim in a water hole in northern Australia.
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